Archive for October, 2010

‘THREE OF THE BEST PLUMBERS WHO EVER PLUMBED A PLUMB’: Three Stooges Moe (right), Curly (center) and Larry wreak havoc in “A-Plumbing We Will Go” (1940). Photo: IFC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK, Oct. 20. 2010 — What on Earth are the Three Stooges doing on IFC?

They’re doing what they usually do: Slapping, punching, poking eyes and throwing pies. But what we really mean is: How do the Stooges, who are now being featured in mini-marathons every Saturday on IFC, fit in with the rest of the programming on this cable channel formerly devoted exclusively to showcasing independent films? It’s enough to make an IFC fan exclaim, “Why, you!”

“These were the first guys who were ‘slightly off’,” said Jennifer Caserta, executive vice president and general manager of IFC. “We have been moving into this alternative comedy genre in a very significant way. And if you look back at what we’ve done, particularly over the past year – for example, we brought ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and a lot of the Python films onto the network [and] we reunited the Kids in the Hall for a series called ‘Death Comes to Town’ – what we’re realizing is there’s something to be said about some very nostalgic properties that transcend the generations. [The Three Stooges] were kind of the first alt-sketch comedy troupe if you really look at it like that.”

Fair enough, but there was another reason why IFC picked up the Stooges for these mini-marathons that first turned up in August and then returned this month, running every Saturday from around 9:30 a.m. ’til 2 p.m. (this Saturday’s lineup begins at 9:35 a.m./8:35c): They were easy to get their hands on since IFC’s co-owned cable channel, AMC, has owned the broadcast rights to the Stooges’ short films for about a decade and air them all over the place, mainly as 20-minute fillers between movies. The difference: IFC’s Stooges run without commercial interruption.

The Three Stooges starred in so-called “two-reel” comedies (about 20 minutes in length) produced by Columbia Pictures from 1934 to 1959. The team – Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard and later, Shemp Howard and Joe Besser – made about 190 shorts for Columbia, a portion of which began airing in television syndication in 1958. They’ve been on more or less continuously ever since, entertaining generations of kids – 99 percent boys (and immature adult men).

So far, the Stooge mini-marathons running this month on IFC have been almost entirely from the Curly era, which ended in 1947 when Curly had a career-ending stroke on the set of “Half-Wits’ Holiday,” one of the shorts that happened to air last Saturday. His older brother, Shemp, replaced him as third Stooge until Shemp’s own death in 1955.

This Saturday’s lineup of 12 consecutive Stooges classics includes the 1934 hospital comedy “Men in Black” (10:45 a.m./9:45c) – the only Stooges movie ever to be nominated for an Oscar (they lost); and the Art Deco-infused “Slippery Silks” from 1936 (1:20 p.m./12:20c), which was Moe’s personal favorite.

IFC’s Caserta admits the Stooges are definitely a guy thing. “I have observed over the years how guys go nuts for the Stooges,” she said. “I have yet to meet a woman who gets them.”

So how about it? Is she right about the great Stooges gender divide? Are there any women out there who “get” the Stooges? And for those of you who love ’em, here’s the question that always sparks discussion among Stooge fans: Who do you like better – Curly or Shemp?

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THE THINKER: Don Draper in another moment of contemplation over the meaning of his life in the fourth-season finale of “Mad Men.” Photo: AMC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK, Oct. 18, 2010 — Don Draper in love? That appeared to be the case Sunday night as ‘Mad Men’ ended its sensational and oh-so unpredictable fourth season on AMC.

Unpredictable? It was impossible to foresee that swinging bachelor Don (Jon Hamm) would suddenly flip head over heels for his willowy secretary Megan (Jessica Pare), confess that he’s in love with her, and then present her with a diamond engagement ring that he just happened to come by a few days earlier (left to him by the late Anna Draper).

Hey, Matt Weiner, what have you done with our Don Draper? Up until this season-ending episode, it didn’t seem possible that Draper – who we’ve gotten to know all too well as a hard-drinking hard case who conquers and discards women like he’s James Bond – would ever fall this hard for anyone and then decide to get married and return to the kind of domestic situation he fled when his marriage to Betty (January Jones) fell apart.

And speaking of Betty, the shoe now seems to be on the other foot. As Don contemplated a future of wedded bliss with bright-eyed, French-speaking Megan, Betty’s marriage to Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) appeared headed for the rocks.

Their status was left up in the air as the season finale came to a close on Sunday, but earlier, Henry angrily confronted Betty for firing Carla, the Draper household’s long-time nanny and housemaid, and not telling him about it. Icy Betty abruptly fired Carla after Carla permitted troubled neighbor boy Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner) to go upstairs and say a quick good-bye to Sally (Kiernan Shipka) before the family moved. Betty, who earlier banished Glen from seeing Sally, ran into him as he was leaving the house. “Just because you’re sad doesn’t mean everybody has to be,” Glen told Betty before running off. By the end of the episode, Betty was completely alone, hauling off the last box from the home she shared with Don, after hearing his news that he’s getting married and settling down again.

Reactions to Don’s engagement news varied according to gender. His male partners at the ad agency congratulated him heartily, as did his chief copywriter and protégé Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). But privately, Peggy expressed herself more candidly when she bonded over cigarettes with Joan (Christina Hendricks) in one of the episode’s best scenes. Peggy had almost single-handedly landed a new client, Topaz pantyhose, but her achievement was over-shadowed by Don’s engagement news, and Peggy decried the fact that one young woman’s engagement was more important than another young woman’s victory in the business world.

The fourth-season finale – titled “Tomorrowland,” after the then-futuristic Disneyland attraction – seemed to be aimed chiefly at setting things up for Season Five, particularly where Don and Betty’s respective home lives are concerned. For Don, blasting off for his own personal Tomorrowland meant severing his budding romance with Faye Miller (Cara Buono), who didn’t take his engagement news well at all, and getting his financial affairs in order with the selling of two houses, his own former home in Ossining, N.Y., and the late Anna Draper’s house in southern California (during a trip to Disneyland with his children and Megan as temporary nanny).

With most of the episode given over to Don’s love life, the season’s most critical storyline, the future of the struggling ad agency, was left unresolved. To find out what happens there, we’ll now have to wait all the way ’til next summer for Season Five.

What did you think of the ‘Mad Men’ season finale? Are these 13-week seasons too short or what? And what do you think about having to wait until next July to find out what happens next? Wouldn’t it be great if ‘Mad Men’ could return sooner?

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LITTLE GREEN MEN: Jesse Ventura takes a moment to contemplate the heavens during a UFO investigation this season on his TruTV series “Conspiracy Theory.” Photo: Hopper Stone

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK, Oct. 15, 2010 — There’s no conspiracy here: Just an outspoken former pro wrestler turned Minnesota governor who’s now hosting a TV series that purports to expose secrets the government doesn’t want you to know. You got a problem with that?

He’s Jesse Ventura, once known as “The Body” in his wrestling days and now holding forth on TruTV on his show, ‘Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura,’ which starts its second season Friday (Oct. 15) at 10 p.m./9c.

The governor is passionate about conspiracies. Last season, The Governing Body and his team investigated the persistent rumors that the U.S. government had a hand in planning the 9/11 terror attacks; that the CIA has a “Manchurian Candidate”-like program to turn ordinary citizens into assassins; and that a remote government-run facility in the wilds of Alaska is being used to develop a secret super-weapon capable of altering the weather.

In a free-wheeling phone interview from his Minnesota home, Ventura insisted that his show is turning up evidence of government wrongdoing that you can’t refute. We also got the 59-year-old ex-gov to talk politics in this turbulent election season, and you won’t believe what this maverick of gubernatorial politics had to say about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Do you consider ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to be an information show or an entertainment show?

Gov. Ventura: It’s an entertainment show, but it is based upon facts. Originally, when we had the concept for the show, we were going to show both sides of the conspiracy and allow the viewer to pick. Well, when one side won’t cooperate in any way, shape or form, it makes it difficult to show their side. And then I also felt, Hell, well, everybody knows the government’s side. Why do we need to show that? Let’s show the alternative side. And I can unequivocally state this: In every conspiracy that I’ve done, the evidence seems overwhelmingly to support the conspiracy rather than the government when those two go head-to-head.

Before you became involved in the show, were you a person who was interested in the subjects that you’re now covering on the series?

The only conspiracy that consumes me is the killing of [President] John Kennedy. And the reason that happened was from wrestling, in a way. Wrestling changed in the mid-’80s from us driving cars to flying in planes. Well, if you’ve ever done a lot of plane-flying, you know that it’s so boring. I mean, you’re in airports and planes everyday. Well, I read. I found a way to counteract that boredom is to read. And so I got hooked on reading about the assassination of Jack Kennedy and every book I could get on it, I’d read on the plane.

‘Conspiracy Theory’ will tackle the JFK assassination later this season, but what can you possibly report that hasn’t been reported already about this story?

Here’s what’s new: On the episode this year, you will hear an audio, visual and written confession from a person who was involved [in the assassination plot] on his deathbed to his son. Most people don’t lie when they’re dyin’!

On the premiere episode this Friday, about the mysterious government bio-research lab on Plum Island off the coasts of Long Island and Connecticut, you make quite an effort to go to the island by boat, even though the authorities frown on it.

I didn’t actually want to go to it. I just wanted to get a closer look at it. I didn’t want to set foot on this place. There’s no telling what you’d catch. . . . Here’s the thing with Plum Island that irks me: It was created by a freakin’ Nazi! [The show posits that the facility was founded in the early 1950s by a former Nazi bio-warfare scientist named Erich Traub who was recruited by the U.S. government after World War II.] And nobody seems to care. And this guy’s expertise was what? Infecting ticks and mosquitos with biological weapons to unleash upon another country!

What is the aim of ‘Conspiracy Theory’? OK, so you expose these conspiracies. Then what? Do you expect this exposure to effect change somehow?

I hope that it wakes people up to not sit and listen to mainstream media and our government – what I call soundbite news. They don’t investigate nothing [sic]. And the point is, many of these stories have a lot more to them than what you get on soundbite news. And I’m hoping to make people question it, to say, Are we being lied to? And the other thing I want to show people is that you’re not allowed to ask the government a question and expect an answer. Why? Don’t we pay their salaries? Don’t they work for us?

Let’s talk politics, governor, because it’s an election season, and a pretty dramatic one so far, due in part to the Tea Party movement. Is it accurate to say that you still follow politics pretty avidly?

Oh, God, yes. I have to doing this show. I’ll put it to you this way about the Tea Party: Anybody that would put Sarah Palin to the top of their list will never get me. She’s a quitter.

You’re not a fan of hers. Why – because she quit her job?

You’re damn right. She quit in the middle of her term. That’s the contract you have with the voters.

Did you feel differently about her before she quit?

Well, I felt she was completely unqualified. I had more qualifications than she did. I had served as a mayor of a town [Brooklyn Park, Minn.] of 60,000 – hers [Wasilla, Alaska] was 10,000. I had served as governor for two years when everybody wanted me to run for president in 2000, and I said I’m not prepared to be the president. I haven’t even completed office as a governor yet. Now, she never completed her office as governor. She didn’t even get two years in hardly! And she quit to get money. Jesus, how do people not see that! She saw greener pastures, said, Screw the people of Alaska, and went on to collect.

Maybe you can do an episode of ‘Conspiracy Theory’ about her.

I wouldn’t waste my time.

Would you ever consider a return to the political arena?

Well, you never say never. I’ve learned that after 59 years. Now, do I have any aspirations to do that at this moment? No. I’d rather do this TV show. I feel I’m being as effective with this TV show as I would be if I ran for office because, remember, I’m an independent, so let me explain what it’s like for me in Washington. I’m like the redheaded stepchild that shows up on the day they read the will. That’s how welcome I am. I now proudly state this: When I hit Washington now, people run faster from me than they do Michael Moore.

NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2010 — Was Sunday night’s ‘Mad Men’ episode really only an hour? So much happened to so many of the show’s characters that it seems impossible that all that plot development could occur in 60 minutes.

But it did. In a very complicated turn of events, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) appeared to find inspiration in a heroin-induced painting for a p.r. plan aimed at improving his dying agency’s image in the Madison Avenue advertising marketplace. The plan involved a full-page ad, written by Don, that he placed in the New York Times without consulting any of his partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

The ad sought to reverse the perception that SCDP was being abandoned by its clients, especially Lucky Strike, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the agency’s income before quitting the firm a couple of episodes ago. In addition, the firm tried to land a new tobacco client, Philip Morris, which was planning to launch a new cigarette brand aimed at women (presumably the brand that would become Virginia Slims), but lost to another agency.

So Don’s full-page ad declared that SCDP didn’t want cigarette clients anyway, that the agency refuses to be in business with companies that manufacture and market such a dangerous product. The ad was aimed at burnishing the agency’s reputation, but by the end of Sunday’s ‘Mad Men’ episode on AMC, it had succeeded only in alienating Don’s partners, who didn’t seem to understand his strategy. One of them, senior partner Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), appeared to quit the agency for good. Is the eccentric Cooper really out? Let’s hope not – he’s one of the show’s best characters.

Meanwhile, the rest of the agency’s senior staff set about firing people in a bid to slash costs. Then, in an effort to sustain the agency, the partners all agreed to kick in up to $100,000 apiece to ensure that the bank continues the firm’s line of credit. This put Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) in a bind as wife Trudy (Alison Brie) forbade him from emptying their bank account to save the agency. Incredibly, Don Draper saved the day, secretly paying Pete’s share of the money.

As if all of the drama about the future of SCDP was not enough, the show returned to Don’s former Westchester home front, to the home of ex-wife Betty (January Jones), where the creepiest kid in all of TV – lonely neighbor boy Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner) – was pursuing a “friendship” with Don’s daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka). Glen is the boy who vandalized the Draper home earlier this season, and a couple of seasons ago seemed to pursue an icky, inappropriate relationship with Betty, who seemed to come perversely close to acquiescing to his advances. Now, Betty’s seeing the same child therapist who’s treating her daughter, even refusing to see a shrink better suited for an adult. What can we say about Betty? She is one damaged individual.

Perhaps the episode’s biggest surprise was the sudden reappearance of Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt), the bohemian artist from Greenwich Village with whom Don carried on an affair in Season One. Now she’s a wraith-like shadow of her former self, an unsuccessful artist and heroin addict who allows her addict “husband” (we’re not sure if they’re really married) to pimp her out for drug money. In fact, drug money was the whole reason she staked out Don in the first place. He felt sorry enough for her to give her some cash and take the abstract painting off her hands that somehow inspired his p.r. scheme. He did not feel like having sex with her, however, though she offered it freely.

Only one more episode left to go in the fourth season of ‘Mad Men,’ and once again the agency is up against the wall. Will Don’s p.r. strategy wind up saving the agency and make him a hero to his partners? Or will he fail? What do you think will happen next Sunday? How on earth will they wrap everything up in a single hour?

Blame it on the irresistible lure of the Garden State. In the final analysis, this lifelong Jersey boy says he just couldn’t pull up stakes in his home state at age 59 for a new life in La La Land, though he did follow Conan there for his short-lived stint as host of ‘The Tonight Show’ on NBC – a gig which abruptly came to an end last January.

The famed drummer – a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band since 1974 (since Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run”) and a fixture in late-night TV as Conan’s musical director (and sometime comic foil) for 17 years – talked about his decision to withdraw from late-night, revealing for the first time that he underwent life-saving open-heart surgery just two weeks after the demise of Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’ last winter and how this “life-changing” experience influenced his decision to stay put on the East Coast.

The occasion for the interview was the pending premiere Thursday of a new documentary about Springsteen on HBO – ‘The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town’ (9/8c). Weinberg, who appears often in the 90-minute film, shared his own memories of the lengthy process from which the ‘Darkness’ album was born – three years after ‘Born to Run’ turned Springsteen and his bandmates into international rock stars.

It was finally confirmed a week or so ago that you’re not joining Conan on his new TBS late-night show. What happened there? Will we ever see you on TV again, other than documentaries about Bruce Springsteen?

[Laughs] I’m sure you’ll see me on television again. You won’t see me on an episodic show, that’s for sure. I did my time. I loved it. It was great. Frankly, I do prefer living in New Jersey and that was one of the problems I had. I love playing in L.A., but my kids and my wife are back east, and we live part of the time in Italy, so it was hard to structure my life [and have a job in Los Angeles]. I can tell you – I can make a little news here, which I haven’t talked about to anybody, but on Feb. 8, I came to the end of a 26-year watchful, waiting odyssey that culminated in 12 hours of massively invasive open-heart surgery.

Was it a bypass?

[No] I had valve repair. I found out about this 26 years ago and I knew about it and I monitored it. At the time, there was not much they could do and it wasn’t as serious as it became. As I got older, it got worse. Fortunately, the protocols for dealing with it became much more advanced and I found a wonderful doctor in New York who specializes in repairing valves. Two years ago, it became life-threatening and I had to do something about it sooner or later. I did it two weeks after [Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’] went off the air.

I’ll tell you it was a life-changing experience emotionally and spiritually. I owe my life to these doctors. If you can remember back to how moved David Letterman was when he got back on the air [in February 2000] – he had quintuple bypass surgery. [In valve-repair surgery] they stop your heart. I was on the heart-lung bypass machine for close to seven hours. Did it play into my decision to remain where I am? Maybe. I mean I had three months of very difficult recovery. When I say it was life-changing – I’ve always been a person who smelled the roses, but everything looks a little brighter. Everything looks a little bit more manageable. Nothing is really that big a deal to me anymore. I’ve never felt better. I thought I had energy before [but] I’m a thousand percent better. I’m playing better than I ever did. I’m not looking backward. I feel wonderful about where I’m at – physically, personally, professionally.

Do you have anything to add to the story of what happened to Conan? Were you as shocked as anybody else that his ‘Tonight Show’ went south that way?

It was very dramatic. At my age, just being in this business for as long as I’ve been, nothing really surprises me, particularly in the landscape of television. [But] any abrupt ending to anything is shocking. It was very weird and awkward and, of course, I felt really bad for some of the people who moved out there – over a hundred people from New York who really took the hit, people who had purchased homes. I know of one case where the day this news broke, which I think was Jan. 5 or 6, this individual had just closed on a house and that’s a real shame.

Let’s talk about the HBO documentary about ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’ Why are we singling out this album for documentary treatment? What’s so special about this one?

Of course, I have a somewhat prejudiced opinion – that all of Bruce’s albums are special. This record, as the next project that was done after ‘Born to Run,’ to me, is extremely reflective of what was going on in music at the time in the late ’70s. If you contrast ‘Darkness’ and its sound with the sound of ‘Born to Run,’ it’s quite different. And I knew at the time that Bruce had begun to crystallize what it was he wanted to write about. I always viewed my role and the rest of the musicians as: We’re colors in Bruce’s palette and I can recall on that record they wanted the drums to be very austere. I think the best example of that is probably the title track, ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’ Why ‘Darkness’ now? Well, why not? It’s 33 years later and it’s sort of like the old Orson Welles line: ‘No wine before its time.’ There was footage that was filmed, it’s steeped in history and [so many years later], there’s a deeper resonance.

The movie traces the creation of the album and it goes into detail about the painstaking length of time that it took. How do you remember it? Was it satisfying, frustrating, tedious?

I remember it as a full range of emotion – definitely not tedium. Now, I’m not the guy sitting in a room writing the songs. Prior to actually going into the studio in, I believe, June of 1977, we rehearsed everyday at Bruce’s house – from like 2 o’clock to 7 o’clock almost everyday and we’d rehearse four or five songs and get them playable. Then he’d come back the next day with four, five or six new songs. That went on for two years! Bruce had to do everything. He had to write the songs. He had to sing the songs. He had to think about what he was trying to say as he was writing it. Really, to be the boss you do have to pay the cost. And that was the cost that he did pay.

Will you watch Conan’s new show when it premieres Nov. 8 on TBS?

Absolutely. I hope they do wonderfully well. I’m sure they will. I put a lot of time and effort into creating our little world over there, you know, with the band and the musical direction and what the band contributed, and I trust and I hope that the band retains the profile they had. [Conan] is a brilliant, hard worker. I’ve been fortunate to have people like Bruce and Conan – you don’t run into guys like that very often.

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You know him as “Omar,” the toughest thug in Baltimore on “The Wire,” and now, he’s a crime figure of a different sort in “Boardwalk Empire,” HBO’s new series about Atlantic City gangsters at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s. Meet Michael Kenneth Williams, HBO’s Chalky White.

He’s the Brooklyn-born actor who riveted audiences for five seasons on ‘The Wire’ in the role of Omar Little, the most-feared of all the thugs, gangsters and street toughs on that hallowed Baltimore-based HBO series.

And now, Williams is back on HBO in a series that’s shaping up to be an even bigger hit than ‘The Wire.’ It’s ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ the sprawling series from executive producers Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese about Prohibition Era gangsters in Atlantic City, N.J, at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s. The series stars Steve Buscemi as the town’s all-powerful political boss and Williams plays dapper Chalky White, also a key local figure whose power stems from his ability to marshal the African-American vote for the city’s white political machine.

In this Sunday’s episode (9 p.m.8c on HBO), Chalky has his most important scene yet, and Williams gets to deliver an unusually long monologue that reveals a harrowing and tragic episode from Chalky’s past.

Williams, 43, talked about the scene, about Chalky, about Omar Little, and how the actor came to receive the facial scar that, for better or worse, has helped define the characters he plays.

That’s a long speech they gave you in this Sunday’s episode of ‘Boardwalk’. How many pages of material is that?

Williams: That was actually three pages. That was the longest speech I’ve had in my career thus far. There was someone I’d seen do a speech [and] I always admired her performance and it was Epatha Merkerson and she did this speech in this film we did together called “Lackawanna Blues.” And I always remember saying, God, if I had the chance to rock a speech [like that] – just the way she embodied that spirit and the character in that scene, it just blew my mind.

What was the effect you were trying to achieve in the scene, particularly as it pertains to the other participant in the scene, a Ku Klux Klan leader tied to a chair and at the mercy of your character?

It’s 1920. It’s a whole different era. You know, for a black man to be in a white man’s face with that type of confidence, it was a rarity. It wasn’t like a cockiness. It was from pain, ancestral pain, if you will. I wanted that hardcore pain to come across in that scene.

Tell us more about the character of Chalky. Is he a stone-cold gangster?

He’s not a stone-cold gangster. He’s a businessman first. But he had to learn how to have a tough skin in order to [obtain] the finer things in life. He wanted the American dream and he had to learn how to deal in the water filled with sharks and he had to kind of become like that to achieve it. He’s like Omar, in a sense. He has a sense of code, he’s loyal, he’s not a backstabber – you’ll see that come out.

You pointed out how Chalky and Omar are similar. How are they different?

You know, Omar was in it for the thrill of the hunt. He didn’t care about the money or the fortune or the fancy house and the jewelry and the cars. He just did it for the love of the hunt. Chalky ain’t in it for the hunt, as long as you bring good business by his way, you ain’t got no problems outta him. But you gonna cut him in whether you like it or not. He’d rather just do business and keep the peace, where Omar just liked to stir the pot.

How did you come to get cast on ‘Boardwalk’?

I had worked with Martin [Scorsese] – Marty, as good friends call him [he laughs] – back in ’98 on a film called “Bring Out the Dead” with Nic Cage and Marc Anthony. So there was a familiarity there. I’m quite sure that everybody and their father was going up for this role so [there was] a lot of competition – but I think that [producer/director] Tim Van Patten was my ace in the hole.

When all was said and done, the seemingly invincible Omar Little was fatally shot by a child while Omar was purchasing a pack of cigarettes in a convenience store. What did you think of the ending they wrote for the character?

I mourned Omar like I lost a best friend. He was a part of me. It was definitely a surprise that no one expected, and it spoke to [the one weakness of] Omar, his Achilles heel. Everybody who was trying to kill him couldn’t get to him and it took a little kid to catch him completely off guard.

How important is ‘The Wire’ to you?

‘The Wire’ changed my life, personally and professionally. It opened me up [to a greater awareness of society’s problems]. It made me more aware of the social issues. You know, me comin’ from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, I was exposed to just my ’hood, but there’s a “wire” in every city in this country, it opened my eyes up to that.

Would you tell us the story behind your scar?

I was 25 – my 25th birthday. I was in Queens, N.Y. I had been drinking. I had that liquid courage in me and so some words got exchanged with some other guys and, you know, normally something I would have ignored, and I got jumped and one of the guys had a razor in his mouth, a straight razor in his mouth like they do in jail, and he pulled it out and he started slicin’ me.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have stopped you in the pursuit of your career. You just did a fashion spread in the October issue of GQ (posing on the Atlantic City boardwalk in a series of designer suits.

I don’t take too much credit for anything. I’m just pretty fortunate. There’s tons of talent walking around here on the streets of New York. It wasn’t like I did anything great. I’m just truly fortunate and grateful for my opportunities.

Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) informs Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) that she has lipstick on her teeth in last Sunday’s episode of “Mad Men.” Photo: AMC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK, Oct. 5, 2010 — Clients may come and go, and the ad agency might be teetering on the brink of ruin, but there’s one thing you can usually count on when watching ‘Mad Men’: Place handsome Don Draper in a room alone with just about any woman, and the result will be sex.

That’s what happened on Sunday night’s episode of the AMC series about the New York advertising biz in the swinging ’60s. Just minutes after she volunteered to remain after hours to help him read through some client files, Don’s willowy secretary, Megan (Jessica Paré), was offering him some executive assistance of another kind. Naturally, the emergency facing Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce – namely, the loss of its biggest client, Lucky Strike – was pushed aside so these two could dance a horizontal mambo on Don’s office couch.

It was all too predictable, which was a shame because we don’t expect TV’s best drama to be predictable – we expect it to be unpredictable. Wouldn’t it have been more clever if Don (Jon Hamm) had rejected this young woman’s advances – for a change?

Well, it wouldn’t have been a huge loss for Don if he did, since his new girlfriend – the research consultant Faye Miller (Cara Buono) – was waiting for him in the dim corridor outside his Greenwich Village apartment. Of course, she had no idea he’d just had sex with someone else. In fact, Faye is apparently so smitten with him that she showed up on his doorstep despite the fight they’d had earlier in the episode when Don asked her to violate the ethics of her profession and feed him information about the other agencies she works with. By the end of the episode, she had become willing to do anything he asked. Does this guy have a way with women or what?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the episode – titled “Chinese Wall,” the 11th installment of the ongoing fourth season – Pete and Trudy Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser and Alison Brie, who was not shown) had a baby daughter and Pete weighed an attractive job offer from rival ad man Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm) – yes, folks, you thought his last name was “Shaw,” but it’s just pronounced that way.

Speaking of new relationships, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) is now in L-O-V-E with the aspiring writer Abe Drexler (Charlie Hofheimer). You see that? Based on the recent rocky history of these two, their new love affair was totally un-predictable – that’s what we expect from ‘Mad Men.’ Peggy’s travails with men straddled the line between serious and comical in Sunday’s episode. First, she happily sleeps with Abe, then gets seriously sexually harassed by co-worker Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson), and then believes a client is making a lewd pass at her with his tongue when he was actually trying to tell her silently that she had lipstick on her teeth.

This recap would not be complete without mentioning Roger Sterling (John Slattery). Is he this show’s biggest jackass or what? What a sad sack he’s become lately – concealing the loss of Lucky Strike from the rest of the agency (he’s known since the episode a week before), then carrying on this charade in Sunday night’s episode of faking a trip to see the Lucky Strike people in North Carolina, phoning senior partner Burt Cooper from a hotel in Manhattan (Roger told Joanie it was the Statler, now the present-day Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd streets) and saying he’d just met unsuccessfully with the clients. And he’s been harassing Joan (Christina Hendricks) to get her to renew their former love affair. Fortunately, she seemed to have slammed the door permanently on that idea in Sunday’s episode.

Only two episodes remain in this fourth season of ‘Mad Men.’ Doesn’t it seem like the season just began? Wouldn’t it be nice if they would make more than just 13 episodes per season? With only two left, do you think there’s enough time to wrap up the show’s many storylines? How do you think the season will end?